


Poster Boy

by MilkshakeKate



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Cloakroom Shenanigans, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Protective Illya, Roleplay, Uniform Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 08:45:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11940546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: Where's the harm in indulging in something complicated if her partner is with her all the way?





	Poster Boy

 

 **Geneva, Switzerland  
** February 1965  

It takes four days for him to look back.    

Up on the platform, between the decorative drapery and the ornate doors to the conference room, Illya has been placed at front and centre. The tallest and —  though she may be biased — most handsome of the entourage, he commands an imposing presence. Shoulders back, head held high and eyes watchful, he is every inch the soviet icon; there are no cameras, and yet here is their poster boy. It isn’t an accident. Although Chairman Semichastny had accepted the invitation to lend a positive image to this ‘new’ KGB, his company tonight has been chosen very carefully. An appearance at the United Nations does not come without the opportunity to present an image, and he intends to make a lasting one.    

The news had been broken very delicately to Gaby that she would play Solo’s wife.     

To maintain her reputation, Gaby had fought it. Truthfully, she is relieved. Trailing Illya and his fellow uniformed officers around the chilly Swiss city has worn her out, but it has also set a new, intriguing goal in her sights. One that only intensifies the longer she lets her eyes travel over the stranger on that stage...  

Napoleon has caught her staring. Despite their instruction not to interfere with Illya’s work here – and, she has been informed, her presence alone is a distraction— he doesn’t scold her. He doesn’t tease her, either. He covers her hand in the crook of his arm and leans down to murmur smoothly in her ear, “Lose the brass and I’d demand to see his tailor.”    

Gaby hums. She joins the rest of the admirers in the room, eyes wandering forbidden over long planes of khaki and crimson, the patent shine of his black boots. A neat blond head beneath it all, and eyes bluer than the band of his cap. She has spent four days willing those eyes to meet hers, though, really, he shouldn’t find out that she’s here at all.  

He has enjoyed Geneva, and she has enjoyed watching him. The Bains de Pâquis, the gardens, the long bar tabs on a hushed government subsidy, and a hotel on the fringe of the freezing Lac Léman. Similar, she knows, to the rare family holidays he’d taken as a boy to the resorts by the Black sea.  

He has been on Moscow time for eight long weeks. No contact, not a word. Yet here he is, in the very same room but completely oblivious to her, her eyes just another set in a great sea of them.

She wants his gaze but he’s busy. Speaking with another official, voice stern and eyes sharp, a mark of Russian sincerity. To think, she had once thought every Russian to be as cold. Until she’d had him spread under her for the first time, over a year ago now, his cheeks pink for the quickness of it and the heat they made, his kisses sucking marks down her chest.    

“Drink?” prompts Solo.    

Gaby blinks under his maddening little smirk. Nods.    

Edging with him through the maze of guests, she almost misses it: it’s the dress, or the hair, or the earrings, but Illya finally looks directly at her with that wild blue glare and she grasps it as soon as she catches him. She holds on like he’ll disappear. His austerity, briefly, is a mask. He unravels up on that stage, startled, as if blinded by spotlight. There, he is both Illya and Officer Kuryakin all at once. His gaze stutters over her black velvet shoulders, down the tan of her chest to the low, narrow conclusion of her neckline just inches from her navel; no brassiere, no need for one with proportions like hers — he has said so before, and it had been covetous. 

But it cracks. With an officer clamping down on his upper arm, Illya is steered into the conference room, and his eyes are bright blue warnings, flaring directly at her.  

She should not be here.  

Gaby loses him without the chance to preen, barely manages to take in the broad fan of his uniformed shoulders before he’s ushered back inside.  

“That’s a very important meeting you’ve deafened him to,” Napoleon remarks.  

“He looked at me,” Gaby says, and shrugs. Her skin is tingling.    

“Can you blame him?”  

With a fresh glass of wine and a husbandly kiss to her cheek, Gaby smiles. Tightly.    

    

 

She’s in an unattended cloakroom and he’s not far behind.  

One at a time, Gaby pulls her sheers down her thighs and off her feet, bundles them up in her hands. It had been so easy. Only a discreet lengthening of her leg, her dress gathered high to inspect an invisible tear in her stocking. Some direct eye contact with him had sealed the deal; every greedy eye on her soon landed on him, too. All his fellow officers, their eyes as ripe as berries for it. She had made him the subject of gossip, sinful speculation. He should be thanking her. She’s sure they’ve had their doubts about his… bachelorhood. After all, she is still Russia’s best kept secret. 

Gaby stuffs her torn stockings to the bottom of an umbrella stand. 

Before she can slip her heels back on, Illya is edging through the crack in the door. 

He seals the door behind him and turns to stare her down. “What do you think you are doing?” he hisses. Her pulse buzzes, her fingers numb with anticipation. He’s stooping for his height in this minuscule closet, so his attempt to seem menacing is a little off, but he's undeterred.  “How long have you been here?”   

“You made me wait.” Gaby hooks into the olive belt around Illya’s middle, and it’s crisp under her fingertips, tailored so close to the trim plane of his waist that her mouth waters. She tugs again, harder, and Illya staggers and rattles the coat hangers, dropping a heavy mink coat on Gaby’s bare feet. “Oops.”   

“In this city,” he clarifies, prying her fingers off him and pushing them back to her. “You should not be here.” 

“Waverly wants to keep an eye on you.”   

A scoff. He doesn’t know where to lay his eyes, throwing his disapproval around this tiny room like big buckets of red paint, anywhere but over her. “If any one of them recognised you—”   

"They don’t have anything on me, Illya. You said it yourself. Burned, like Rome was burned. Like the Vinciguerras.” 

The KGB were not best pleased with that affair. They certainly hadn’t advertised the mission’s outcome in the newsletter. Gaby’s involvement had virtually been tossed to the wind, or at least the very darkest recesses of the archives, along with the rest of the botched work the KGB have no interest in taking credit for. Illya, on his first return to Lubyanka, had arranged that. 

“You can’t be here,” he mutters anyway. “They see me make contact with you, everything is over. Everything.” 

"Yet here you are..." Gaby flattens her hands to his chest, heaving now for his exertion, so worked up. Even that excites her. She takes a deep breath through her nose, tries to clear her head. She steps even closer, traces the sharp line of his lapel and peers up at him beneath her lashes. “Everybody is looking at you tonight, Illya. I’m just another bored wife to them.”   

Illya shakes his head. “Irrelevant. You are with Solo. They could know him, from CIA.”   

“And tonight,” she murmurs, twisting a shining button on his chest, “They are on their best behaviour.”  

Illya huffs a long-suffering sigh through his nose. His hands remain by his sides, so she lets hers slowly wander to his hips, palming over the front of his trousers.   

Illya circles her wrists. “No.”    

Embarrassment floods hot to Gaby’s cheeks. She hums curtly. “As uptight as the uniform, huh? It’s a shame to see you out of those little _Jantzens_.”    

"You were at the bains.”   

Gaby shrugs under his glare, strokes up his sleeve and over a crimson shoulder board. She had in fact been on a boat across the lake, too cold to hold the binoculars steady. Solo had begged her to take a photograph. Now she wishes she had. “Three KGB agents sitting in a sauna... Sounds like a joke.”    

“Was business,” Illya grouses, straightening his jacket. “Chairman insisted on integration, experiencing the culture. Something to discuss with Secretary-General tonight.” 

Then swiftly he’s down on one knee, and Gaby’s stomach drops with him. Before she can step back the mink is shoved aside and he picks up her calf, freeing her bare foot. There is some hesitation. He doesn’t ask after her stockings, but now he knows. Now he knows her legs are bare, and will be for the rest of the night.  

He has always worshipped her legs.  

Gaby lets out an indulgent hum; she won’t be deterred either. Her calf is slim and light in his hand. She wonders if he has his gloves on him, the black ones. She knows he possesses a pair. They are part of this uniform. Gaby rolls her ankle so her muscles will glide smooth and naked in his palm. But he continues to feel over the floor for her shoe and, when he finds it, he slips it gently back onto her foot, tucking her heel in before searching for the other.   

“Have you missed them?” she asks, tilting her hip so he cups the soft crease behind her knee. It comes out dark, her voice rasping gently at the end, as it always does when they have to be quiet.  

Illya ignores her. 

Standing in one high heel now, Gaby steadies herself on his shoulder while he takes to her other calf. Her fingers roam idly over his nape and his jacket’s collar is stiff, a stark contrast to his soft blond bristles there, his deep warmth in this February chill. She thinks of his chest, the gold and the heat pulsing under all those layers, all those buttons so taxing to unpick…  

“Or have you just missed being down there?” 

He glowers up at her, unamused, and she runs the tips of two fingers over his lower lip. He looks like he’ll bite them clean off.  

“Enough.” The second shoe is on, far quicker than the first. Her calf is left cold, and her hand removed from his neck. He stands abruptly, steps around her. Before she can even settle into her instep, Illya has opened the door, and is standing in its shadow as the room swells again with the sound of chatter, clinking glasses, classical music. No doubt he will leave too, once she is long gone. Step out, forever immune in that uniform, as if he had never seen her tonight. As if he has never known her at all.  

Rejection streaks down her spine, and Gaby turns cold. Fine. She doesn’t look at him. She won’t look at him ever again, if that’s what he really wants. She smoothly drapes her hair to one side, baring her neck and the twinkling fall of her earrings. Hushed, she’s scanning the bar for for Solo, but there’s no doubt of whom she’s speaking to: “Tell me you haven’t wanted to tear this dress off me all night.”   

In his long-held silence, Gaby only hums with interest, acidic, and leaves him in the dark.  

  

     

“You didn’t! What did you do with him?”   

“I did,” Major Vasilyev assures her, and although his hairline proves otherwise, the drink and his thrill for her attention makes him look almost as young as Illya. “He got what he deserved.”   

The man has taken to her. Solo has been working his mark in the gardens for the past hour, so Gaby is free to turn into the senior officer’s attention. Now Vasilyev leans forward in his chair to tipsily boast about his most impressive accomplishments. She plies him for more: perhaps he will let something valuable slip, and her evening as a wife won’t be for nothing. Only, to tell her more would be to risk his position, he’d confessed solemnly, and waited for it to sink in.   

Gaby has always had a good read on strangers. It’s a necessity in Ossis to be vigilant. Of course, Vasilyev believes she is some oblivious trophy bride from the West and, after three more brandies, he isn’t too shy to tell her of the ‘dangers’ he has faced and thwarted in East Berlin. The information could prove useful, so she feigns awe, as is expected of her, though she feels sick to her stomach.   

And all the time, there are two white hot beams burning into her from across the room.  

Vasilyev hums, pleased with the conclusion of his own story. “Another drink, Fraulein...?”  

“Frau,” she corrects, but with a look that assures him it doesn’t matter. It has become this easy. Almost as easy, she thinks, as the brush of a hand on another... But that may be too much. A certain pair of bright blue eyes could cut through steel already.  

Good. She wonders when they will strike.  

And like that, the constant presence in the corner of her eye is gone. The disturbance of his weight tilts the room like set of scales, throwing her off balance. Before she can hunt for him, he reemerges from behind a pillar on the far side of the room, and she's struggling to get a grasp on what Vasilyev is saying, can’t fathom anything else.

Illya adjusts his cuff and sinks slowly down the steps, panther-like, through the thickness of bodies.  

Gaby gulps the last dregs of her wine. Her heart is thumping. He must be able to hear it. And oh, she's still angry at him, humiliated by his rejection after eight weeks of nothing but his own hand. Yet she wants him to see it, the beating of her sun-dark skin where her dress opens only slightly. She wants him to slip inside, warm her quaking ribs with his palm. Damn him, damn him, damn that miserable Russian. She won't look.

With the sudden downturn of her eyes Vasilyev edges over, lays his arm on the back of her chair. His uniform’s trousers brush against her bare calf, and Gaby recoils. 

This uniform is an ugly thing. Even with all the cruelty bleached from its stitches it would still repulse her. His, like Illya’s, is of a finer weave than anything he would wear on duty. This is ceremonial attire, a finely tailored suit with gold brocade. It is strictly for show. Still, Gaby sees this uniform and remembers the searches, the demand for her papers, the disappearance of countless neighbours. Remembers, while Vasilyev yammers on about her absent husband and starts writing something down, how every Russian she’d seen in East Berlin had been a victim of her vengeful plots, which she would pile up and up in her head, forever unfulfilled. And now she’s faced with an officer again, speaking to her as if he had never been involved. How easy it would be, she thinks, to rip the badge from Vasilyev’s cap and stuff it in his big ugly mouth.  

Gaby smiles politely. The presence behind her absorbs everything else in the room.   

“The Chairman wishes to speak with you.”   

Gaby holds Vasilyev’s eye, but he peers up and behind them without concern, responding likewise in Russian. “Now?”  

Illya must nod. She can imagine the look on his face; she’s one of very few to ever defy it. And she remains so, as Vasilyev flattens his jacket and rises from the table without question. 

“To be continued,” says Gaby, offering her hand. Vasilyev spares her a leery smile, takes her hand in a complicated way to squeeze it, and lets it go.  

And then Illya is leaning over the back of her chair, and he's picking up her hand from her lap, prying open her fingers, taking a crumpled slip of paper from her palm. Gaby looks up just as he rolls his glare back to Vasilyev, and he shoves the paper into the Major’s chest.  

“Now,” Illya growls.  

Gaby curls her fingers in her lap.

Something unspoken cleanly cuts off Vasilyev’s excuse. Gaby pretends not to notice his shamed glance at her, instead hiding her nose in her empty glass. But even once the Major is far from the table and all her hard work here has been made useless, Illya is still standing right behind her. His proximity is a caress across both shoulders, but she won’t turn in her chair. Why should she? He had been the one to send her out of that dark little room. He won’t let her get lost in him, he won’t leave her alone; he had sent her out with a slapped wrist, but he won’t let her forget him.  

What does he want? 

“Five minutes,” he mutters, and he’s gone. 

  

 

She makes him wait.  

The lighting is stark down this hallway, where catering carts and folding chairs lean up against the walls. Of course he’d taken off to somewhere far from the designated guest space, somewhere impossible to navigate. She tries every door, and every door is jammed, but she knows the right one when she sees it, knows he has already picked its lock. At the very far end of the hall a braided rope and a sign in several languages prohibits entry.  

Gaby ducks under it, slips inside, and seals the door behind her.       

  

  

She’s in the room for barely a moment, can only just take in the towering windows, the black night sky and the moonlight seeping through them before he blocks her view. His chest, his shoulders. A heavy breath gusts over her hair and she’s pulled into him.  

“Illya—” she covers his hands, already curving under her behind, pulling her against his thigh until she gasps and stumbles in her heels, and his lips are flush against hers, heavy and full. In the dark he could really have been anybody, but she knows the press of that mouth, the graze of that jaw. The height, of course. Gaby’s back hits the closed door and if she wasn’t so angry at him she would laugh, she would, for how rarely he gets like this, how it shocks her every time. She came here expecting a telling off, and to hit him very hard. Instead she loops her arms over his shoulders, strictly for balance, and mutters, “You’ve changed your tune.” 

“Vasilyev is a moron,” he says, muffled into her neck and followed by the harsh suck of a kiss. Gaby slaps his back; he knows her cover tonight, knows what that fresh mark will do to it. 

“He’s your superior,” she reminds him. 

“Still moron.” 

“What did his note say?” 

Illya scoffs and sweeps from her backside to her waist, encircling her. His hands are so whole, and her vision so full with his body leaning over her. Gaby tips her head back, lets him palm up and over her breasts, his thumbs brushing her perfectly and making her mouth go dry.  _Damn him, damn him, damn him_. 

“What did it say?” she tries. 

“His hotel,” he murmurs in her ear, kisses it. “The room number.” 

Gaby laughs cruelly, lightheaded. He tries to kiss her but she ducks back, lifts his cap by the brim to get a closer look at him. “Why does it always take jealousy to have you like this?” 

“Jealous,” he scoffs, but he falters, considering it. “Did he— hurt you?” 

 _Touch you_ , he means. “What? No. No, nothing like that.” She tugs the cap back down to his brow. “And don’t pretend _that’s_ what you were worried about. If you’re so bothered about me being invisible, why would you challenge him like that?”   

“He is married,” Illya explains. “It has happened before, many times. And worse. We have been instructed to report him. This will be his final warning.” 

“Oh,” Gaby says. Illya tucks her hair behind her ear, grazes her cheek with his thumb. She tries not to lean into it; he isn’t forgiven for jilting her, not yet. “So if he was a stranger you wouldn’t have stopped him from feeling me up?” 

Illya grumbles, “I did not say that.” 

That voice hums through her bones, all its depth and weight. She could sink under it, her anger threatening to settle like silt in a pool as cool as his hands. It’s nice, she thinks, very begrudgingly, to be pressed up against him again. 

Pulling back, Illya asks, “What did you want from him?”  

Now his lips are parted, kiss-warm. Gaby can’t stop looking at them, knowing the sharp white teeth inside, the taste of him. It has been a long time since they were last intimate, and the sudden abundance is dizzying. His touch slips to the low curve of her back as he takes her in, urging her to answer him. 

“Nothing,” she says, and with his unbroken stare she says it again. “Nothing. I wanted you to look. I wanted you to look at me again.” 

“Gaby. I am working.” 

“Well, I’m working too.” 

“Yes.” Low, it rumbles through her chest. “You have been watching me all week.” 

She was wondering when he would bring that up again. Since discovering it, his hands have turned from push to pull, and his dismissal has become desire. Gaby wonders what could have changed. Could it be that he likes to be watched…? A great fault in a spy.  

“That is very dangerous thing to do.” 

She shrugs out of his grasp and slips further into the dark. The ceiling is so high, so far away. To her left, the paned windows swallow up the whole wall, but they’re safe here; the lights are out, the glass frosted by the cold. They are alone. The steady click of her heels echo back to her from every direction, and the world feels like it’s spinning under her. It is only partly for the wine. The growing flush of warmth through her body begs her for something cool and steady.  

There is a heavy conference table in the centre of the room. Gaby backs towards it, keeping Illya in her sights until her backside meets the edge, and she plants her hands there, hops up to sit on it, and leans back.  

She shucks off one high heel, and it falls to the parquet floor with a clatter. The other joins it, pushed off by her bare toes. 

Illya follows her.  

The night falls on him, all moonlight and deep black shadows. The cut of his cheeks – she swears he has gotten leaner – and the tips of his lashes are as sharp as his shoulders, as gold as the filigree. This is her Illya, and this is Officer Kuryakin, whom she has never met.  

Gaby's understanding comes quickly, faced now by his two halves. Suddenly, this uniform isn’t a costume. It is a part of him, and everything in its stitches comes with it; his youth, his father, and the unspeakable things he has done for the agency it represents. It’s all at her fingertips, can be just as easily pushed away as it can be pulled close, just as he is. Her choice, utterly, what she does with it, but she cannot have one without the other. That uniform comes with Moscow, and chess, and his shaking hands, his night terrors, the scar on his temple, which she has kissed countless times without a second thought. It is as much a part of him as anything else she has come to love. So, if she wants to have him, all of him, she must make room for this uniform as well. 

But how interesting, to have both. To want both. Gaby doesn’t care to think about what it means, how the thought of being held down by him like this tonight just makes her ache. But it does. And after a lifetime of soviet moderation, Gaby is clever enough now not to deny her body what it wants when it’s offered up to her. 

Illya’s hands finally splay wide on either side of her, flat to the table. 

“What if you had gotten to me first, when you came for me in East Berlin?” she asks. 

He pauses, measuring her. “I did.” He doesn’t like to think of that night. How close he had come to killing Solo if he had succeeded, to tossing Gaby back behind the wall, or worse, once her utility had ceased. Gaby knows this, just as she knows his next confession, having weaselled it out of him before: “Three days you were under my surveillance. Americans intercepted.”     

Gaby tuts in sympathy, tugs him closer with two crossed heels behind his thighs. “But these three days, watching me... What did you discover?”      

She knows the answer to this as well.  

Illya grunts for the insistence of her hips, grinding against him where he’s already growing hard, straining. His eyes darken under the shadow of his black brimmed cap, and she watches him swallow. “Enough,” he answers.     

“Enough?”  

“Enough to want you.”     

Gaby’s cheeks prickle. You didn’t answer the question, she wants to say, but that is his answer. Who is she to tell him it’s wrong?  

Illya picks up her hand, lays it on his shoulder, and comes down to one knee. If she leans, Gaby can still see the immaculate shine of his black boots.  

Three days he had watched her in East Berlin, and Gaby hadn’t once looked at him. For two years she had been so careful under Waverly’s command, so vigilant, never knowing the day she would be contacted. Illya had been good. Very good. But so is she; four days watching him here, and he has only just looked back. 

Kneeling, he gathers her ankles together in one hand in front of him, squeezes indicatively to have her keep them that way. When he releases them, Gaby complies for confusion alone, shocked by his sudden complicity. Perhaps he won’t need as much coaxing as she’d thought...     

“I was briefed about you,” Illya explains coolly, and begins mouthing over the top of her closed thighs. The brim of his cap drags against her skin as he goes, inviting her to remove it, but she doesn’t. She won’t deny it: it is a very primal victory to Gaby to have a KGB agent on his knees, his mouth on her, his head bowed. Practically anonymous like this, but with all the experience of Illya in knowing what she wants. Illya must know. He must, because he lifts his head to meet her eye and gauge her reaction, and whatever he sees in her decides it for him. He’s onto her. He knows.

Perhaps this is his apology.

Without a word, he returns to his work.

Illya pushes up her dress to pool at her hips and breathes a pleased sigh, pulls her closer to his mouth to press a too-soft kiss there. The nip of his teeth finishes it, with a soothing sweep of his tongue before he sets her back down again. Gaby huffs restlessly and shifts down the table, angling herself to make him travel higher. He holds her still.  

“There was interest, then,” he tells her. “There was a photograph.”     

Nothing is shy about Illya’s hands as he kneads into her. An inspection, an experiment on how she gives under them, how her muscles take to a certain pressure. There is something new about this. Something nerve-racking about the strict starch of his cuffs on her skin, the chilly trail of brass buttons leaving goosebumps in their wake. She tries to ask what he’s doing when suddenly his head is buried in her lap, and he’s nosing into the seam of her legs, his jaw rasping as he drags up and in between. When Gaby squirms and lets out a gasp her dress is rucked up higher by an impatient hand and Illya is at the apex of her thighs, pushing his nose shamelessly to her cunt with a long, indulgent inhale. 

Gaby seizes his shoulder, shivering when the same heavy breath comes out hot and damp. “A photograph?” she manages shakily, and plants a hand behind her for balance.     

“Ballerina,” he answers, a murmur that thrums through her. Two authoritative pats to her hips. “Open your legs.”      

With her scoff, Gaby finds that her mouth is very dry. But she listens to him, fascinated, and Illya patiently pushes them higher and wider until both thighs are flat to the table, and he shifts forward on his bent knee to nestle in between.      

“Ballerina,” he confirms smugly, and glances up at her with a private curl of a smile. He is playing a game, pretending to discover this for the first time, and the smirk soon disappears, replaced by the cool reservation he has worn all week.      

Gaby watches him, lust twisting with defiance as he hooks an arm around her leg to trap it open. He rubs his thumb curiously over the front of her underwear. Whatever he’s pretending to be now, there is still an element of desire that is solely Illya’s; he takes his time when met with something he has missed.      

“This is some fantasy of yours?” she tries loftily. She hopes in one way to make him shy, but in another entirely to hear him say it aloud.     

She gets neither.  He counters, “Of mine?” and casts an eye over her white-knuckled grip on his uniform. He shifts closer to her heat, takes to the brim of his cap.      

“Nein,” she breathes, and immediately he stops. She tries to keep her voice level, but the expectant gaze from blue eyes and gold lashes – Illya’s, all Illya’s - has her dismissing any shame for it. Gaby lays her fingertips on his cap, brushes along the stiff seam. “Keep that on,” she decides, “and use your mouth on me.”     

She’s tugged forward by two strong hands and he’s back between her open thighs, head tilted and pushing along the fabric with the point of his nose. He plucks at it with his teeth and it snaps back, having Gaby let out a rushed, shaky laugh. “And these,” he says, glancing up at her. Gaby shifts under his gaze, and nods. 

"Off."

Illya closes her legs for her. Gaby pulls them down to the soft crease of her bent knees, her calves, and off her bare feet. She offers them for him to take, so he does, bunching them up in his left hand.

If anybody were to walk in now, there would be no excuses. She imagines that, dressed like this, Illya would be immune to punishment. He wouldn’t even need to stand. Only a glimpse at the long seam stretching down the length of his back, the severe set of his shoulders and the cross of her calves lying over them, and the intruder would wisely slip out the way they came. Perhaps that immunity is what spurs Illya to press a chaste kiss to her ankle, eyes closed, wistful; she can’t rebuke him for taking his time. Won’t, in case he stops altogether. When Illya opens his eyes they’re sharp with focus, and he hooks her legs over his shoulders to slide back between them again, sights trained on the embrace waiting for him there.     

And she’s pulled down, thighs wrapped around him and his open mouth on her before she can savour the sight. Illya grunts his pleasure for the wetness he finds there, squeezing her to bury himself impossibly closer, nearly drawing her off the edge of the table.    

“Oh,” Gaby breathes, grabbing at the nape of his neck in shock, the seam of his cap cold and hard under her fingers. “That’s…”    

He melts her with a long hot sweep of his tongue and Gaby lets out a shameful whine, writhing against the plush, wet pressure of his mouth. She has missed him, missed this, taking so boldly tonight where he is often so gentle, patient. Illya licks up and halts there to suck, humming with satisfaction for the new squeeze of her thighs against his ears. He holds them to keep them there, tight. Gaby sighs, sighs until her panting becomes begging, until she doesn’t need to beg anymore.  

“Quiet,” he mutters, but it buzzes against her so she can’t obey it right away, has to bite into her palm to silence the rest. Two of Illya’s fingers slip easily inside her and she can't keep her eyes open for it, can’t believe the sight of her own legs around an enemy collar, and the dark visor she can’t see beneath but where she _knows_ his brow is furrowed, _knows_ his eyes are closed, pleasuring her while he, dressed to make demands, goes completely untouched. She wants to laugh, wants to cry. She settles for panting _gut, guter Junge_ through her fingers, which has Illya sighing hot groans into her, working even harder.   

She’s on the brink already, arching up and up and up, when she's dropped from his shoulders and he’s standing up, fingers stroking idly as he stuffs her underwear into the front of his jacket. The loss of it is devastating — she has to swallow down a dry sob, stop herself from yanking him back down. “I am confiscating these,” he tells her, and it sounds like a dismissal, but she isn’t done, not yet. Taking them where? Illya fights her grip on his arms: he’s going to leave her like this? Legs still open and right on the edge with his lips still shining from her, like it has all been a cruel joke? 

He doesn’t. He wipes his mouth on his wrist and pacifies her with an intentional look, before slipping his fingers out of her to work at his trousers, loosen his tie, hurrying.    

Gaby reaches for him as soon as he’s free but Illya huffs a hard breath, leans into her, over her, until her back is flat on the table and her hand is trapped between them.     

“Let me,” she urges, and wets her lips, so dry for her heavy breathing. Nothing is quick enough. Gaby snakes her hand down but it’s caught under his bulk. “Let me touch you.”  

“No.” He blindly lines up her hips, pushing up through her slick with just the blunt head of his cock. “I am taking you like this.”   

Gaby tries hard to stare back at him evenly, but her eyes are close to rolling backwards. “Alright,” she breathes.   

“You are still…?” There’s not a chance he has a condom in his dress uniform.    

“I’m still taking them,” she says, and he nods. Illya lays an open kiss to the sweat gathering on her chest, mutters a curse to the dress for getting in the way. She smirks as he tries to push it aside to get at her breasts. “Thank you for asking.”    

Another nod, dutiful. “Take this off.”    

With the full weight of his torso on top of her, and all those buttons and adornments dragging perfectly, Gaby isn’t compelled to move. She wriggles half-heartedly, making no real effort to get free. 

Illya looks dully down at her, and she stares right back. A dare? A dare. Forearms on the table, he takes to soft skin of her shoulders and draws the sleeves down to her elbows, binding her arms there. Gaby wriggles again, chest bared, and Illya hums his satisfaction, ducks his head to lave a nipple with the flat of his tongue, pinch it gently between his teeth. Gaby’s skin tightens all over, goosebumps rising.    

“Pervert,” she murmurs, her head dropping back.    

“You want this,” Illya says, “or I would be on the table.”    

Gaby likes that he doesn’t make her say it, that he simply offers it to her. 

She hates this uniform. She wants him in it. 

Is this a fantasy of hers?  

Illya palms along her thighs, waiting for her, and she turns her head to the colossal windows, where the stars are out and anybody could look in. He cups her bare knee, so patient. She wants this. It can’t be rationalised, it certainly isn’t moral, and yet he is offering it to her. There is a degree of vulnerability in being seen like this; how, as always, Illya’s observance is pin-point accurate, and in just a look now, searching her features for some confirmation to a theory of his, he certainly knows what this is. Seems to know what she wants, what she is asking of him, and he, as always, is only willing to comply.  

Where is the harm in indulging in something complicated if her partner is with her all the way?  

“You want this.” It’s murmured, his discovery. Absolute. Gaby peers back down her body to find him, his breathing steady, his face carefully composed. He knows what he is wearing, just as well as she does.  

Gaby nods, her hair shifting under her. The damp and throbbing heat between her legs is unbearable, so she ruts against him to have him address it. He’s so hard, and she tells him so. Illya’s eyes close, pained. His cock draws up through her slick again, teasing, and he stops there, hanging his head to watch her keen in frustration under him, wanting him inside. 

Gaby would slap off his cap to pull on his hair but her arms are caught by her sides. He’d done it himself, bound her like this. She wonders if this really is entirely her idea... Now she has his compliance, she only needs his enthusiasm. 

“You know me, now,” she says slowly, testing the waters. “But did you want this back in East Berlin? Did you ever imagine it?” 

“Gaby...” 

“Do you still have my picture?” She revels in the pulse of his cock for that, the soft noise he makes as he adjusts his weight on his arms. “Put your hands on me.” He does, bracing her hips. “Now you have me, what will you do?” 

Illya shakes his head in disbelief. “What game is this?” 

“Ours. If you want.” 

His eyes are very steady, as they are when he waits for an insult.  

“You enjoyed sending Vasilyev away. Well, I enjoyed that too.” Gaby snakes her hand down her body, parts herself with two fingers for him. Illya’s eyes glaze over, and any reservations he’d had about taking her like this quickly diminish. He tightens his grip on her hips, and Gaby smiles, taking his cock and deftly guiding him into her. “Mm. I think I only wanted to see you like that... Protective. Like that uniform isn’t for your KGB, but for me.”  

Illya sighs, hanging his head. She can’t say things like that. His voice drops, low and warm with the threat, “I should turn you over.” 

“You should,” she agrees, stretching luxuriously under him. The thought of his hand on her back and being taken that way is enough to flip over willingly. Gaby breathes deeply, reminds herself that, if this goes well, tonight is only one of many opportunities. “But I want to see you.”    

“My uniform.” 

“All of you.” Gaby reaches for his navel, brushes her thumb through the dark gold hair there. Illya’s fingertips dig in even deeper. “Now fuck me properly before I report you for truancy.”    

A roll of his eyes and a disapproving look, at last. Illya responds well to instruction, and he thrusts into her with one long stroke before drawing out of her again, giving every inch of himself only to take it away. Gaby groans; she loves to get a rise out of him. She reaches up to capture his mouth and he finally relents, bending down to kiss her and build his rhythm.     

Only their bodies move, only their breathing makes a sound in the vast, cavernous room. Illya begins to roll into her with something heavier than she’s used to, stronger, firmer. There is a drive behind it. Gaby can’t decide if it’s for her insistence, or if Illya truly has wanted it this way all along, but had only been too shy to ask.  

His palms are dry and hot, gripping onto her. It has been as long for him as it has been for her, and he wastes no time in catching up to all he’s missed. Gaby shifts her shoulders in frustration, trying to climb out of the dress that’s holding her back so she can grab at him and hold on tight. 

Illya moans then, pulling her wriggling hips back to him and pushing back into the tight wet heat. He’s lost, eyes closed and brow furrowed already. 

“Pull this down,” she breathes, and hunts for his wrists in the dark to guide him there. “Get it off me, Illya.” 

Her sleeves are hurried down her arms, the dress soon an unrecognisable wad of dark velvet around her middle. Gaby reaches for him and he comes down willingly, still pushing into her with a rhythm he needs but stuttering with the kisses she lays hotly into his neck, the bites to the underside of his jaw. Illya groans, thrusts harder until Gaby’s slipping up the table and out of his reach. He sharply tugs her back to him, again and again. And she tries to match him, grabbing at his lapels, clutching at his jacket until he brushes something perfect and bright hot inside her, sapping her strength entirely and having her lose her grip, flattening a hand to her face and tearing through her own hair as she’s dragged back down the table to meet his thrusts. Gaby only hisses out a curse, breathlessly urges him on, and on, and on.  

He is so close, and so hot to the touch, his mouth on hers and radiating with his effort. The cap is in her way so at last Gaby flips it off and it drops to the table with a thud. She yanks on his hair and pulls him in, curving her back and emptying her chest to get as close to him as she can. He’s completely senseless. The only thing left is the thrust of his hips and the clasp of her legs around him, slipping down the wool of his jacket, the sharp edges of his pockets grazing her inner thighs.

Illya plants his palm in the velvet dress around her middle as she’s rocked under him, so heavy, his fingers splaying as wide as they can go, claiming as much of her as he can with one hand. 

He mutters something long and winding in Russian and even if Gaby were fluent she wouldn’t understand it, babbling and broken up by his heavy moans, and with his blinding touch brushing over her breasts again, tender, hungry, as if he has already forgotten it. He’s everywhere, and she wants him everywhere. She tries to focus on the return of his mouth to hers, the taste of him and the gusts of his breath over her cheek, into the crook of her neck. 

She can’t focus for long. Illya slips between them and rolls his fingertips in tight little spirals, stealing any sense she has left. Gaby bucks up and whines, grabs on to anything she can as he pounds into her, the deep pressure tightening around him as she gets closer, closer, and the precision of his fingers luring that swell of nerves up and up until she thinks she’ll burst if he keeps going, die if he stops.  

She covers Illya’s mouth when he comes first, stifling the shout that vibrates through her fingers. When he finishes, he lays his forehead flat to her bare chest and she’s panting almost as hard as he is, raking through his ruined hair with greedy hands. Over the bulk of his shoulders she watches his back rise and fall between her legs, the drag of his jacket where she’s still wet and longing.  

Gaby urges him under her breath and pats his back until he wakes slightly, remembering where he is. She lies back and he cranes over her, letting her gasp against his lips as his fingers pulse inside and his thumb pushes firm and steady circles where she guides him with the jolt of her hips. Her broken whine is swallowed up as she comes, kissed away as Illya watches her ride his hand through it, the cuff of his jacket cool and starched as it brushes between her thighs. When the rush settles down her legs and Illya’s kisses fall lazily to her neck, Gaby opens her eyes, reflexive tears spilling down her temples for relief. 

She knuckles them away, can only let out a heady little laugh. Illya lays a single kiss between her breasts and holds it there.  

“Alles ok?”  

Illya nods, his lips still pressed to her skin, and her heart warms under it. There’s nothing like having him lax on top of her again like this, with his back to the door, his eyes blissfully closed and off-guard. His cap is still on the table beside her, and she can’t believe there had ever been a doubt in her mind about the sum of the man beneath it.  

Illya’s grip shifts, and his heavy hand is on the flat of her stomach again. His splayed fingers pooling in the velvet, clutching, pressing down, holding her under him.  

“Well?” she breathes. 

Illya is still panting. “Yes.” It’s muffled against her chest, but he soon brings his head up to look at her. She is so used to the heat of his skin afterwards, his sweat, the hair and the muscles of his chest, that having this uniform under her fingers is a rare luxury, like sleeping naked in crisp hotel sheets. She slips discreetly down the back of his collar, feels for the notch at the top of his spine, the stretch of his warm skin. There is her Illya. The softness of him, hidden to everyone but her.  

“I’ll need my underwear back,” she murmurs. 

Illya flushes deeply and reaches into his jacket, shamefaced, as if he's woken from a spell. Biting the inside of her cheek, Gaby is sad to take them from him. It’s a constant mission of hers, to have him take what he wants for himself. But it’s February, he'd finished inside... It’s only practical. 

Illya helps her into them, pulls them all the way up to her hips to settle with a soft snap, and he lays his hands on her sides again. 

His eyes land on his cap, but Gaby snatches it up before he can. She turns it around and around, runs a finger over the little label at the back, the one with his name on. Kuryakin, I. She knows that arrangement of Cyrillic without hesitation. The heat between her legs is still begging her, and the gentle caress of his thumbs on her hips is something she will never get used to, but she has an unofficial mission of her own that has suddenly increased in priority, tenfold.  

Gaby comes up to her elbows. “I’ve watched you here this week. Seen you in this,” she gestures with his cap to the front of his jacket, his still-unbuttoned trousers. “Wanted you. You know what that means for me.” 

“Yes.” 

“It means I trust you.” 

Illya nods again, again.  

She leans up to lay the cap loosely on his head, straightens his loosened tie, hoping he can see what she feels without having to say it. 

“I know,” he says. “I would never… not with anybody. But with you, it is…” 

She waits for him, but he doesn't finish. So she tells him, because it's the truth, because it's what made her mind up to begin with: "I don’t want this from anybody else.” 

Illya makes a small, satisfied sound. Perhaps that reassures him, just as it reassures her. How it excuses them both because they are both complicit now, accomplices in something devious. She won't deny that it's a thrill to share this with him, this dark thing that only feels safe because he condones it. Illya, with his moral compass like a constant, domineering mother.

It can't be so unforgivable if he is considering doing it again.

“I did not think that I would want this, but…” 

“But you did.” 

Illya sighs like he has broken something.

That won’t do. 

She pats his chest, determined to barricade the guilt flooding into him second by second. “I think you should bring this back to London.” 

A careful glance at her.   

“I mean,” says Gaby, tugging her dress back down, shifting the sleeves up and over her shoulders. Illya’s forlorn expression is a picture. “Maybe then, we could see about getting you on that table?” 

Illya is appalled. She adores it, how he looks up, and down, and anywhere but her because he _wants_ that, he does, and it’s a delight to see him struggle with the things he utters when he’s out of his mind with pleasure. 

He hums grimly, leans in to kiss her with his eyes open, and begins fastening his trousers. “I will see what I can do.” 

  

The evening’s programme is unfolding as if she had never left. The diplomats, missionaries, and distinguished guests are gathered around the reception's stage with their backs to her, sipping champagne and listening to the host. Gaby tugs at the hem of her dress, eases her way back into the masses.

When she's pulled back under Solo's wing, he is wearing a bizarre little smile.  

Gaby ignores it, helps Illya to skulk unseen across the reception by taking Solo's chin to angle him down to her, as a forgotten wife would. “How did it go?”  

“You tell me.” 

“The mark,” she mutters. There's no way. No way he could know. "What happened?"

Napoleon frowns at her. He plucks something from her shoulder —  a short blond hair, she discovers with horror — and holds it so close to her face that her eyes cross, before letting it float away and disappear.

“Why, Darling," he murmurs back, beaming. "Nothing I wasn’t expecting.” 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank everyone who commented on [Reparation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8771425?show_comments=true#comments) expressing an interest in a dedicated uniform fic! I believe [**dunkinlove**](http://www.nostalgicexpatriate.tumblr.com) was the first to suggest it (and a frequent elbow-nudger to get this cursed thing finished), hence the gifting!! but there are a whole BUNCH of you who were so sweet to me about this, and put up with my 'soon, soon'-ing for so long, and i'm v thankful for it. So THANK YOU, especially to [**turningleaf**](http://www.turningleafposts.tumblr.com), who has put up with my yammering for WEEKS and has helped me out and motivated me a bunch, and [**tennyo**](http://tennyowithanunclespecial.tumblr.com), who set my mind at ease a little with regard to the whole uniform accuracy thing! 
> 
>  
> 
> My eyes went square and my scrolling finger went numb reading everything there is to read (on the English corner of the internet) about KGB uniforms... I mostly went off www.undertheredstar.com, which seems fairly legitimate? Here's [Illya's cap](http://www.undertheredstar.com/KGBnew/M58_off_side.jpg), and here's a cute lil drawing of [his uniform](http://www.undertheredstar.com/Periods/1958em.jpg), for which I found zero usable photographs omg... I don't know what I was expecting. Spies... [tuts].
> 
> I've also spent half my god damn life wondering about Illya's rank. The youngest, and their best within 3 years? Their best... what? Soldier? Officer? Resident Big Boy? I have no idea how the KGB ranks their lads and lasses but I took a wild guess that Illya, as an agent, would be an... officer? (This is me saving my skin in case there's somebody (where were you?? I needed you!!) out there who knows this stuff inside out and upside down.) I'm a little bit confident it's not all hideously wrong... But MOST importantly: Illya works it. That's all you need to know. Realistically, that's all that matters. Big Ol' Illya's uniform cost the KGB a great deal more in material than any of his comrades', and accounting at Lubyanka won't let him forget it. 
> 
> I made another tumblr, by the way! Purely for TMFU ramblings, prompt fills, and the freedom to yell about this film without alerting my loved ones to my............ uhhh.......... proclivities. You can find me at [Milkshakekate](http://www.milkshakekate.tumblr.com)! xxx
> 
> also **I KNOW HE WENT DOWN ON HER AGAIN I KNOW HE DID I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW I KN-**


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